Princess built the 40M to prove a production yard could work at superyacht scale without losing what it does well. LE VERSEAU is the argument in favour.
Start with the numbers that do not usually go together. She is forty metres, she sleeps twelve guests in five cabins, and she will run at 23 knots. Most yachts that carry that many people at that length are displacement boats that cruise at ten and stay there. She will do that too – ten knots is where she is most efficient and where she spends most of a charter week – but the reserve is there when a forecast turns or a party in Hydra starts earlier than planned. Semi-displacement GRP hull, twin MTUs, at-anchor stabilisers, 2,000 nautical miles of range.
Her interior is the other surprise. Where a lot of 2016 production yachts went pale and minimal, LE VERSEAU went the other way: full-height walnut and burr panelling, high-gloss and warm, run through every space including the corridors. It is a decisive choice and it has aged well, partly because the joinery is genuinely good and partly because the volume of glass keeps it from closing in. The main saloon runs long and open, seating aft and a formal dining table forward under a mirrored ceiling detail, with sliding doors to the aft deck at one end and a sculptural console framing the lobby at the other.
A skylounge sits above with its own bar, a wide media wall and softer seating – the room people gravitate to after dinner. Below, five cabins: a full-beam master with a walk-in dressing room and a marble bathroom with a tub, a VIP with the same walnut and a bath of its own, two doubles and a twin. Twelve berths at forty metres is tight arithmetic on paper and it does not feel tight on board, mostly because the beam is used properly and the corridors are not.
The sundeck is where the week actually happens. A jetted spa tub sits set into the teak forward of a wet bar, with loungers along the rail and a shaded lounge behind under the hardtop. It runs almost the full length of the yacht and it is high enough to see over most of what she anchors next to.
Her toy list is deep for the size: jet skis, Seabobs, kayaks, paddleboards, water skis, wakeboards and a Williams jet tender that doubles as the shore boat, all launched off a hydraulic swim platform. A 2026 refit took her through paint, systems and soft furnishings, so what a charter guest sees this season is a yacht that presents as considerably younger than ten years old.
Seven crew run her, based between Genoa in the shoulder seasons and the Aegean and Adriatic in summer – a pattern that suits a yacht fast enough to reposition between islands without losing a day to it. Greece, Croatia and Montenegro are her usual ground, and she is priced at 155,000 per week.
What she offers, in the end, is capacity without compromise: a proper twelve-guest yacht, finished to a standard that does not apologise for its production pedigree, that can also outrun the weather.
